Archive for Tee Morris

Last month I reviewed The Ghost Rebellion, by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris. They stopped by The Writer’sKindred Spirit Author: Thanks for stopping by The Writer’s Desk. Your fifth book in your Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series came out on June 17, 2016. Can you tell us about this book and the series?

Pip Ballantine: Well, the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences is a branch of Queen Victoria’s government that deals with the strange, the unusual, and the bizarre. Eliza D. Braun and Wellington Thornhill Books have been through many adventures in their time in the Ministry, but in this book they are starting to have to face up to their pasts and the consequences of their actions. The Ministry has been called James Bond in a corset.

Tee Morris: In Phoenix Rising, Eliza is the hot-shot secret agent that has been known for making snap decisions in the field. On this one particular mission, though, Eliza fails mission parameters and is demoted to the Archives alongside Wellington Books. Wellington is a by-the-book, clerical dynamo with many, many hidden talents. It is their casual approach to the cold cases of the Ministry that get them rolling along in their madcap adventures.

KSA: Why Steampunk?

Pip: For me, it is fun while at the same time allowing me to mess around with history. I’ve loved doing that during my writing career thus far. I find it inspirational and enjoyable to weave real life events and characters into our stories.

Tee: I love the whole idea of steampunk. Modern conveniences and technology with Victorian flair. There is also a touch of swashbuckling adventure with steampunk. It was as if the two settings were made for one another. I have written steampunk both in and out of this universe, and I have so much fun playing in it. Often times, it’s fun to find out what actually did exist and what I have to make up.

KSA: What is your writing process? Do you have a particular time and place to write? And how does it work when two authors collaborate on a work of fiction?

Pip: We can write any time, anywhere. I work on my laptop so that is very much true, but there usually has to be a cat staring at me, so I get things done. I just need music playing, usually a soundtrack, so I don’t get too distracted. I use an application called Write or Die…which is almost as fearsome as it sounds. I work in 1,000 word blocks, get up, have some water, walk around…and then back to it.

Tee: I know there are authors who insist on being at their home, being on their computer, in their proper study, etc., etc., but deadlines do not always allow for that. I try to make myself portable as possible. I’ve written on iPads, on laptops, and on my desktop here at home. Cloud computing has made sticking with one file insanely easy, but I’m of the mindset it’s not where I write or how I write but making sure I get 1-2K words in. I need to get in that word count. Without it, the book doesn’t get done.

KSA: Pip, you are from New Zealand, as is one of your two main characters, the “colonial Pepperpot” Eliza Braun. Are you like her in other ways?

Pip: Apart from being New Zealanders we don’t have a lot in common. I’m not nearly as much of an adrenaline junky, and I am just a bit scared of heights. A New Zealander invented the commercial bungy jump, and I am pretty sure Eliza would have been first in line to try that. We both have families that we miss, but she was raised in Auckland in a pub, and I was raised in Wellington, but unfortunately not in a pub.

KSA: What about you, Tee? How much of you is in the character Wellington Books?

Tee: I think Wellington and I are equally nerdy. He’s an awkward sort, even with the time spent partnered with Eliza D. Braun. I would also say he draws a lot of inspiration from Eliza. I whole-heartedly admit I do that with Pip. So while I’m not a super spy, I am very much crazy for my partner-in-crime. Also, I can be a font of knowledge, both useless and useful, now and then.

KSA: What’s been the most rewarding thing that’s happened to you since the books came out?

Pip: This whole series has been a madcap ride. We’ve won awards like the RT Reviewer’s Choice which we never expected to, but I have to say it is the readers’ reactions. People who jump up and down when they meet us at a signing, or create a character from our role-playing game. However, when we got our first cosplayers that was mind-blowing.

Tee: For myself, it’s been the reactions to The Diamond Conspiracy, and having fans tell us they went back to Phoenix Rising and re-read/re-listened to all three and discovered the clues we had left behind for them. We had enough for two more books and The Ghost Rebellion will continue a second arc we kicked off in The Janus Affair. It’s been this long-game we’ve been playing and readers enjoying it with us that has been incredibly gratifying. There is also how the world has evolved, somewhat organically. First, there was the podcast where we invited other authors to write in our universe, and these writers up and ran with it. Jack Mangan created the Agents of OSM and Michael Spence with the Mercury Gates. Then there is the RPG from Galileo Games, The Ministry Initiative, that is opening whole new possibilities for gamers everywhere. Watching the Ministry evolve to what it is has been amazing.

KSA: Books in this series have been published both traditionally and independently. Can you talk a little about that?

Pip: Our publishing route has been a zigzag from the beginning. The Ministry was originally supposed to be a podcast for pay, but as I have figured out, everything has been peculiar with this project. At this stage we are up to about six different publishers, and a roleplaying game, that only happened because I made a joking aside to Brennan Taylor of Galileo Games.

Tee: The anthology, Ministry Protocol, we knew would be an independent venture as anthologies are a tough sell; but continuing the series was a hard call because we knew it would be a lot of hard work ahead of us. The truth, however, was that we loved writing this series; and with CreateSpace, we knew the publishing process would not be as hard as it had once been almost a decade ago. After what happened with the Kickstarter in 2015, it was also a swift kick for us to take hold of the series and end it on our note, on our terms. So already, yes, all this work has been worth it.

KSA: Have you always wanted to be writers?

Pip: Ever since I finished reading all the books my Dad had, I have written. One of my school mates recently contacted me and recalled this old hardback journal I would carry around and scribble in.

Tee: Actually, I had studied theatre. I wanted to be an actor, but I wrote for fun. My first novel was an accident, and I still look at it with a great amount of pride. I still get my theatre fix when I podcast or record audiobooks, but writing has been a blast since stumbling upon it, and I feel like each project teaches me something new. you never stop learning as a writer. Very much like being an actor.

KSA: Do you ever sit down to write, but you just don’t have any ideas or you are stuck on what to write next? How do get over that feeling?

Pip: I don’t believe in writer’s block. If I get stuck, then I know it is because something isn’t working in the story, and I need to perculate it a little longer. So I take a break, do some housework, go for a walk, watch a documentary, something to get my mind off that track. Then when I come back, my brain has usually come up with the solution to why I can’t move forward.

Tee: If I am suffering from writer’s block it means I am working too hard. I usually decompress with a movie or clock in some television, but the problem I have isn’t writer’s block but more like what idea do I start developing? I invest a lot of time into my books, from creation to promotion; and there are only twenty four hours in the day, and I have to sleep sometime.

KSA: What other books have you written, both together and separately? Do you still write books separately?

Tee: Right now, I have a space opera and an urban fantasy that I am shopping around. On my own, in shorter formats, I’ve written science fiction and horror; but I would not mind selling one or both of these ideas to a publisher. I’m known for non-fiction as well, having published five titles covering topics in social media; but when it comes to fiction, people know me for steampunk, so selling one of these works-in-progress would be fantastic.

KSA: What do you like to read? What are you reading now?

Pip: I love to read, but finding time when a writer can be a challenge. I tend not to like reading something in the same genre as I am writing. At the moment I am reading Borderline by Michell Barker. It’s urban fantasy, with fey folk, so I enjoy that. I wrote a book with something similar but set in Tudor England, called Chasing the Bard.

Tee: Right now I’m reading my own work. Why? I’m recording for Audible my parts in The Ghost Rebellion audiobook, and then I have to record two of my steampunk fairy tales for a collection Pip and I are releasing later this summer. When I’m free, I will probably delve into a few books about the spy craft in the early days of MI6. There is also a few books we brought back from RT I would like to dive into.

KSA: Can you tell us about what you are writing now or about any new books you have coming out?

Pip: After The Ghost Rebellion, we will be turning to write Operation: Endgame, the sixth book from the Ministry, out in June next year. We will also be editing a YA set in the Ministry world. The first book of that series is called The Curse of the Silver Pharaoh. Oh yes, and I am working on a fantasy series by myself, set in early Hollywood.

Tee: Right now, I need to focus on finishing up the audiobook production, then join Pip in both Operation: Endgame and Curse of the Silver Pharaoh. Then, I need to work wit Pip and a few other wickedly witty people to put together Countless Hues of Crimson in time for Christmas. Then, while all that is going on, I’m hoping to have one of these works-in-progress I earlier mentioned signed and under development. So a lot will be happening this summer, I’m sure.KSA: What advice do you have for young people who want to be writers?

Pip: Be persistent and always learning. There are going to be plenty of bumps in the road, so you have to be determined. As long as you do that and keep learning as you go, absorbing new skills and working on your craft, you will get there.

Tee: There are no guarantees. Your first book might be a runaway smash. Your first book might be some of the best literature written, but not earn back its advance. So get some skills in business, because when you write—when you do anything creative—you are going into business for yourself. So run your writing career like a business.KSA: Do you ever give talks or presentations to the public? Do you have anything coming up soon?

Pip: We are actually doing an online seminar for The Writer’s Digest. I am speaking on building fantastic female characters. We also have a couple more in-person appearances coming up this year.

Tee: Yes, July is going to be a particularly busy month as we just booked appearances at Escape Velocity, a convention hosted by the Science Fiction Museum, on July 1-3 in Washington DC. Then, we have Motor City Steam Con at the end of July in Detroit, Michigan. Once out of July, August should give us a break and then we start back up with appearances in September.

KSA: Finally, I wonder if you’d share a writing prompt for aspiring young writers?

Pip: Two children in steampunk London must build a machine to help them escape their poverty.

Tee: Young man wakes up and finds at the foot of his bed a perfect sphere of glass. Turns out that select kids of all background all woke up with them.

KSA: Thanks so much for joining me. I can’t wait to find out how it all ends for Books and Braun!

Author biographies for Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine can be found in my blog post from last month.

I intended to write this post last weekend, but I just couldn’t do it. Sadness got in the way. Then, scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed Friday I ran across a “memory,” a quotation by Neil Gaiman that I shared a year ago:

“We [writers] decry too easily what we do, as being kind of trivial — the creation of stories as being a trivial thing. But the magic of escapist fiction … is that it can actually offer you a genuine escape from a bad place and, in the process of escaping, it can furnish you with armor, with knowledge, with weapons, with tools you can take back into your life to help make it better… It’s a real escape — and when you come back, you come back better-armed than when you left.”

I’ve spent a lot of time this week in front of the television, unable to write, watching the news from Orlando–first the shooting at Pulse, then the death of the toddler at Disney World. It’s put me in a bad place, a place of sadness. I needed solace, an escape, and so, as I have all through my life, I turned to stories, not ones I was writing but stories to read and escape. Neil Gaiman hit the nail on the head, and while reading escapist fiction didn’t make the pain and sadness go away, it did help.

While I love reading literary fiction, it’s times like these that I want a complete escape from reality. Over the past couple of years, that’s included the award-winning steampunk series Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences from authors Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine. Their latest, The Ghost Rebellion, fifth in the series, came out Friday. I was lucky enough to score an advanced reader copy, which I immediately dived into.

The Ghost Rebellion takes Ministry agents Eliza D. Braun and Wellington Books to India as they pursue the nefarious, brilliant, and extremely dangerous Dr. Henry Jekyll. The doctor’s experiments on Europe’s aristocracy have caused chaos and despair for our agents in earlier encounters, and alarming effects come to light in India. There, they also find treachery and treason from an unexpected source and are forced to face harsh realities of colonialism that they hadn’t considered before. At the same time two other ministry agents readers have met in earlier adventures, Brandon Hill and Bruce Campbell, are up against the Ministry’s old adversary the House of Usher, while in Russia during winter on a search for a cure to Jekyll’s experiments on Queen Victoria. As usual, our agents rely on their ingenuity, as well as the ministry R & D scientists’ steampunk weaponry and modes of transportation.

As soon as I finished this installment, I handed it off to my husband, hounding him until he finished so we could discuss it. I was feeling less than completely satisfied with the book and wondered if he felt the same. He didn’t, having enjoyed it just as much as the other four. It took a few days of reflection for me to realize my dissatisfaction was plain old frustration that questions I had from earlier books had not been addressed and now I would have to wait another year for the answers.

The Ghost Rebellion is an escape, and while I don’t have steampunk weapons, Neil Gaiman’s observations are correct; I am better armed to fight the sadness and to get beyond the bad place so many of us have been in. I do recommend reading the books of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences in order for both character and plot reasons. And I do recommend them for a fun, escapist good read.

If Tee Morris’s name sounds familiar to you, it may be because he guest posted a blog right here last year. Check back here next week for a interview with him and Pip. In the meantime, take a look at Tee’s blog post yesterday and find out why he was especially nervous about the release of this book.

About the Authors:

Philippa (Pip) Ballantine

Born in Wellington, New Zealand, Philippa has always had her head in a book. For this she blames her father who thought Lord of the Rings was suitable bedtime reading for an eight year old. At the age of thirteen she began writing fantasy stories for herself.

She first earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Political Science and then a Bachelor of Applied Science in Library and Information Science. So soon enough she found herself working in the magical world of libraries where she stayed for over a decade.

Her first professional sale was in 1997, and since then she has gone on to produce mostly novel length fiction. In 2006 she became New Zealand’s first podcast novelist, and she has voiced and produced Weaver’s Web, Chasing the Bard, Weather Child and Digital Magic as podiobooks. Her podcasts have been short listed for the Parsec Awards, and won a Sir Julius Vogel award.

Philippa is the author of the Books of the Order series with Ace- Geist and Spectyr and Wrayth out now, and Harbinger to follow. She is also the co-author of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series with Tee Morris. Phoenix Rising debuted in May 2011 and The Janus Affair came out in May 2012. She also has the Shifted World series with Pyr Books, with the first book Hunter and Fox out now.

When not writing or podcasting, Philippa loves reading, gardening, and whenever possible traveling. With her husband, Tee and her daughter, she is looked after by a mighty clowder of three cats.

Tee Morris

Tee Morris began his writing career with his 2002 historical epic fantasy, MOREVI The Chronicles of Rafe & Askana. In 2005 Tee took MOREVI into the then-unknown podosphere, making his novel the first book podcast in its entirety. That experience led to the founding of Podiobooks.com and collaborating with Evo Terra and Chuck Tomasi on Podcasting for Dummies and its follow-up, Expert Podcasting Practices for Dummies. He won acclaim and accolades for his cross-genre fantasy-detective Billibub Baddings Mysteries, the podcast of The Case of the Singing Sword winning him the 2008 Parsec Award for Best Audio Drama. Along with those titles, Tee has written articles and short stories for BenBella Books’s Farscape Forever: Sex, Drugs, and Killer Muppets, the podcast anthology VOICES: New Media Fiction, BenBella Books’ So Say We All: Collected Thoughts and Opinions of Battlestar Galactica, and Dragon Moon Press’ Podthology: The Pod Complex.

Tee brought all these skills to the award-winning Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series which he wrote with his wife, Pip Ballantine. When he is not writing, Tee enjoys life in Virginia alongside Philippa Ballantine, his daughter, and three cats.

Last year I discovered a steampunk series that my husband and I have been devouring ever since. Books in The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, by Tee Morris and Pip Ballantine, have been published both traditionally and independently and raking in the awards. Today, I am thrilled to share a guest post by Tee Morris that gives great advice to both experienced and aspiring writers about pitching books to agents, editors, and readers.

With the onset of Spring comes warmer weather and countless opportunities to get outside and enjoy the day. Spring also ushers in a new season of book festivals and conventions where editors and agents will be in attendance. This does not mean they are the chum in open waters and you pounce on them directly with manuscript in hand. It does mean that you have potential opportunities; and what if you happen to strike up a conversation with an agent or editor and they ask the inevitable question “Are you working on something at present?” Do you have an appropriate response at the ready?

Note that I said “appropriate response” which, I can assure you, is not a summary of your work-in-progress within five minutes. You don’t have a matter of minutes. You have a matter of seconds for your appropriate response. Representing your novel, you would think, would be easy for writers. After all, writers can put words to thoughts, weave then into gripping stories and engaging characters, and easily create heroes, villains, societies, and worlds where readers happily lose themselves. When it comes to summarizing a book, I’ve seen writers stumble through description so in-depth they fail to notice the editor or agent they are telling this to has checked their watch twice and are having a tough time keeping eye contact. It might surprise you how many writers can’t boil their book or series into one sentence. When you have the attention of an opportunity, you have to have a perfect pitch at the ready.

Before you think “Pitching a book is someone else’s job…” it’s not. Not any more. Whether it is to an agent, or at a book event where you may want to sell your own books and participate on panel discussions, the intent of pitching a book is to sell your book within a minute. One minute to convince someone that your book is the one they want.

For the science fiction series The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences, my wife Pip and I pitch the series as “The X-Files set in Victorian London.” or “James Bond in a corset” (which a book critic actually described it as). This is what is commonly known as the elevator pitch. Maybe, say ten or fifteen years ago, using pop culture references would have been considered “reducing the value of their work” but with today’s visual mead-driven society, you are giving your work a marketing angle and a connection that people can make. This is essential for selling to a publishing house or to a potential reader. An elevator pitch wraps your work up in a nice big bow and sells itself. If it is a particularly good elevator pitch, you should hear three little words next: “Tell me more.”

Now is the moment you go into some (not all, but some) details. “A brash, impulsive secret agent from New Zealand teams up with a bumbling English Archivist to solve the unsolved mysteries conspiring against the throne of England.” You still keep it brief, only revealing enough to entice.

Finding the perfect pitch for your project is not an elusive art. It’s a process of finding what best fits your book or work-in-progress. Refining your summary of a work-in-progress means:

• Finding pop culture references that work for your world, your characters, your work. “It’s a Steampunk X-Files.” — The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences.
• If pop culture references are not to your liking, go on and use literature references, but give it your own spin. “The Lord of the Rings, if written by Mickey Spillane.” — The Billibub Baddings Mysteries
• Creating “tag lines” (similar to how movies are marketed). “Not all are expendable.” — John Scalzi’s Redshirts
• Using current events or trends to build upon. “A childhood friend prevents his best friend from joining a gang.” — A.B. Westrick’s Brotherhood. (She used this pitch to sell her book to an agent. The agent said, after reading the first three chapters, “You didn’t say the gang was the Klu Klux Klan! Nevermind, send me the rest!” It sold within that year to Penguin Publishing.)

Welcome to the wonderful world of the writer’s pitch. This is when the pressure’s on with your latest labor of love, blood, sweat, tears, and editing; and now you have sum it all up in one sentence.

So, sell it to me. What’s your best pitch? Tee Morris has been writing adventures in far-off lands and far-off worlds since elementary school. Inspired by numerous Choose Your Own Adventure titles and Terry Brooks’ Shannara series, he wrote not-so-short short stories of his own, unaware that working on a typewriter when sick-from-school and, later, on a computer (which was a lot quieter…that meant more time to write at night…) would pave a way for his writings.
Tee has now returned to fiction with The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences series, written with his wife, Pip Ballantine. The series has made quite an impression with Phoenix Rising winning the 2011 Airship Award for Best in Steampunk Literature, The Janus Affair winning the Steampunk Chronicle 2012 Readers’ Choice Award for Best in Literature, and Dawn’s Early Light recently named Best in Steampunk for 2014 from the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Awards. Now in 2015, Tee and Pip celebrate the arrival of their fourth book, The Diamond Conspiracy, with the fourth season of their Parsec-winning companion podcast, Tales from the Archives.
When Tee is not creating something on his Macintosh, he enjoys a good run, a good swim, and putting together new playlists to write by. His other hobbies include cigars and scotch, which he regards the same way as anime and graphic novels: “I don’t know everything about them, but I know what I like.” (And he likes Avo and Arturo Fuente for his smoke, Highland Park for his scotch!) He enjoys life in Virginia alongside Pip, his daughter, and three cats.